Talk:Bombing of Dresden in World War II

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
 Bombing of Dresden in World War II is a current good article nominee. If you have not contributed significantly to this article, feel free to evaluate it according to the good article criteria and then pass or fail the article as outlined on the candidates page.

Nomination date: 2007-03-04

This is a controversial historical topic, which may be disputed. Please read the talk page and discuss substantial changes there before making them. Please also consider the particular importance of using proper citations when adding information to highly controversial articles.
(This message should only be placed on talk pages.)
Portal:Germany
 Germany Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles related to Germany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project and help with our open tasks.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale.
(If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Other languages WikiProject Echo has identified Bombing of Dresden in World War II as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the German language Wikipedia.


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Contents

[edit] Legal considerations

For previous discussions see Archive 13: Legal obligations and Archive 13: Legal considerations

[edit] Far-right German politicians

For previous discussion see Archive 13: Udo Voigt

[edit] The case for the bombing as a war crime: First paragraph

For previous discussion see Archive 13: The case for the bombing as a war crime: First paragraph

[edit] First Hands Accounts as Part of Argument?

I also forward the idea that the first-hand accounts are valid to be introduced as evidence of a "war crime". As Genocide Watch's President, Mickey Z and Jenkins point out its inhumanity as their primary reason for the "war crime" position, this simply supports it. Another reason would be that one of the things Shimoda took into account was the sheer suffering which this clearly documents. You made a good point when you broke the arguments in two, and unintentionally explain why this is so. You write: While the other lot says the military benefits disproportionately small for the destruction, pain and suffering it caused. There are two ways this can be examined in a favorable "war crime" context. You could aim to show that the military benefits were small (or, as mentioned above, even nonexistant - i.e. lack of military necessity) or that the pain and the suffering was great. The latter begs the question "how great?" Well, you can certainly cite figures and say that x number of people died or you can show how they died, the sort of inhumanity-angle that Shimoda takes into account (essentially, atomic bombs were a more efficient extension of firebombing)--Sin cloro 17:22, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

-PS why don't you pick a color to write in so that your contributions get the same visual attention as mine? And what was that format you were experimenting with before I reverted to Lysy?

I am so sick and tired of this,was a war-crime!,now they telling that 15.000!!died in Dresden soon they would say that nobody died!,It is a scandal meanwhile people go to jail in europe cause they dare to say that the nazis did not kill 6m jews!.They extreme right jews got the power and we ate up everything that "they-our" media says. I am sooo pisseed off!.user:pablingat 20:07, 1 February 2007 (UCT)
No, the figures used in the article are sourced from respected peer reviewed historians, unless the majority opinion amoung respected historians change the figures (of between 25,000 and 35,000) ought to remain in this article. This article is not the place to falsify history. As for you other comment, that has nothing to do with the development of this article. --Philip Baird Shearer 20:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments above,but i would like to know what you call "respected historians",what do you mean like David Irving? till he started to investigate about the holocaust,I do not understand why your answer is so offensive as well "As for you other comment, that has nothing to do with the development of this article" I am not attacking you,just talking the TRUTH, but fine keep the (development?) of this part-fake article.
P.S:We all know that most of the books were written by the allies(winners) not the lossers, So can we call them respected historians?,for whom?,for Israel?. Open you mind mate,turn off cnn & bbc for awhile and think about it,Cheers!..--user:pablingat 02 february 2007


The last one first because it is easy: indentation is sufficient.
Originally most of the the British political reaction to the bombing was in the section "Points of View", moving it out and creating another on the German reaction I think strengthened the article. For the same reason I think that the personal experiences are better in a subsection of impact of the attack. Even if the "Was it a war crime" debate was moved into a separate article (A suggestion which as been made more than once), arguably the personal experiences are part of the impact of the attack more than they are part of a war crime argument and should stay in the article. Part of this is because in war civilians are killed in horrible ways but that does not automatically make the killing a war crime even in these supposedly more enlightened times:
Under international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute, the death of civilians during an armed conflict, no matter how grave and regrettable, does not in itself constitute a war crime. International humanitarian law and the Rome Statute permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks against military objectives,[1] even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur. A crime occurs if there is an intentional attack directed against civilians (principle of distinction) (Article 8(2)(b)(i)) or an attack is launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage (principle of proportionality) (Article 8(2)(b)(iv). Source: Luis Moreno-Ocampo Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court
Also if anyone is going to read was it a war crime in this article then the chances are that they will also have read the sections before. If we do not assume that then we are doomed to repeat almost all of the rest of the article in was it a war crime section. --Philip Baird Shearer 20:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Before I begin, your response was duplicated so I took the liberty of deleting one instance and keeping the other. A good point about the relationship between the statute and Dresden. If the Dresden bombing had occured yesterday, we would be here taking into consideration motives and military goals and worrying less about the effects of firebombing. However, for the same reasons that any discussion of the Hague within the war crimes section, I remind you that there is no such model or framework during the war. Also, the moralists and humanists - particularly the "left" and a variety of religious hosts - craft their argument around this point of Dresden's totality, suggesting that "the suffering was too great for it not to be considered a war crime". Since this is a fundamental point of their argument, I think it makes sense to include the chilling accounts in the section. You said it yourself that "the amount of suffering in light of the degree of existing" (even nonexisting) "military necessity" was ultimately what all contentions boil down to. I think the eyewitness accounts fit in the section, but they could really go in either place. However, I am concerned that various portions of the war crime argument are scattered throughout the article. This weakens the actual section. Likewise, the RAF/aircrew comments (Akehurst and Leonard Cheshire) hit the issue right on the head because they understood that their target was the enemy and they saw the first hand results of their attack. They make it very clear that even if "Dresden served a military purpose" - they do not indicate otherwise - the suffering was far too great to justify the raid. And yet, these quotes could also become part of the Immediate/Contemporary response section. Maybe we should just forge forward and see where the war crime section is when it reaches its conclusion, yes?--Sin cloro 22:40, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Pasafists think all war a crime. These views can be expressed first section of "Was the bombing a war crime?". This section is meant to be putting forward arguments based on credible reliable sources of why it was a war crime under international law. As I have said before in Debate over bombings I think that the structure (section headings etc) of the debate in the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is better. It would allow the inclusion of people like Bishop George Bell who thought that the Church of England should "condemn ... the bombing of civilian populations".
I think you are misunderstanding the term "Military necessity". There defiantly was a military necessity to damage Dresden (you may argue that it was small, but the Allied high commends clearly though there was a military advantage to be had, and those reasons are laid out in the section reasons for the attack). If that had been done with the relatively few casualties as occurred the next day in the bombing of Chemnitz (14/15 February 1945), then I doubt that many would be arguing that the civilian injuries were clearly excessive in relation to the military advantage gained by the attack. As Moreno-Ocampo points out it is not a war crime to kill civilians if those deaths are justified by military necessity, (unless of course the attackers breach the laws of war when killing them). In judging if these aerial assualts were a war crime, it is not relevant how the civilians died, even if those deaths are very unpleasant, providing the weapons used to kill them are not prohibited by the laws of war. This is why I think if we are going to include personal accounts of the raids they should not be in this section. If you wish to include a quote from Cheshire about Dresden, because he was an expert in this field, then that is a different matter.
I think that we have reached an agreement on the first 2 paragraphs, even if like me you are not really happy with all of the wording. What do you wish to do next? --Philip Baird Shearer 01:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, on the bright side, we seem to have found something we can live with for the first two paragraphs. Interesting that you have revived the subject of subdividing the "war crimes" article, as now would be the time to do it. It seems to me that this is a double edged sword. As some have taken note on the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki talk page, subdivision invites a number of problems. Unrelated, but I completely disagree with your military necessity synopsis for all the reasons I have already mentioned. Where do we go from here? I'm going to insert the RAF quotes and I guess we can play around with them. Then I guess we should take a look at Friedrich.--Sin cloro 09:45, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

This is totally absurd.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zwitterion (talk • contribs) 01:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)


Late to the discussion but - Didn't Churchill mention that burning 600,000 Germans to death was the mission. ( a little bragging etc but he did seem to know the approximate population and refugee count - they did attack at night - they did have a second attack during the rescue attempt - this sounds like military aims were probably not paramount ). The count of deaths that now are excepted as "official" seem to match the German army count of recovered bodies. It seems unlikely that ( after seeing the pictures of Dresden after the bombing) that such a large number of refugees could have escaped in the middle of the bombing at night.) Churchill intended to kill as many civilians as possible, why do historians think the Allied airforces were too incompetent to do the job - they certainly flattened the city, hardly a house or wall left standing. Is there a political motive - who wants a low count, who wants a high count - I see little history or forensics in any of the arguments/counterarguments, might as well be on CODOH or NITZOR. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 159.105.80.92 (talk • contribs) 19:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


A War Crime? Hahahahaha. A bit late in the day to decide that now, hippies! All the "criminals" are dead. Besides, inter arma silent leges. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 137.73.127.161 (talk • contribs) 19:27, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


Does the estimate include the known dead 18,*** ( number from Irving and the German archives plus the number missing ( 35,000 )? There seems to be more houses and hospitals destroyed than people killed - were the people given an early warning to evacuate? The lower estimates ( Taylor, Evans, et al ) seem more of a stretch than Irving's numbers, unless Germans had mutliply huoses per person?159.105.80.80 17:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


Churchill issued a memo to his staff soon after the bombing that maybe terror bombing was not making the Allies look like the good guys ( paraphrasing ). It was smart of Lipstadt's team to use the Dresden bombing in an English court - maybe they had done a psyche review of the judge beforehand. 159.105.80.80 17:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Art. 25 of Hague Convention

Art. 25: The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.

Clearly this article defines valid targets which are defended and invalid targets which are undefended. The RAF mainly bombed civilian parts of the city such as buildings which were undefended, they didn't focus on the defended parts like the anti-aircraft defenses which were around the city. Strictly speaking, they bombed 78,000 dwellings which were undefended. Philip, did they violate against Art. 25?--62.8.232.10 19:11, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The Nuremburg Tribunals ruled on this matter, hence the case closed over 60 years ago.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.155.31.223 (talk • contribs) 03:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

German airspace as a whole was defended - it's not the RAF's fault if their system was breaking down by Feb 1945, and there doesn't need to be an AA gun in front of every house for them to be considered defended. IxK85 02:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with IxK85 (See Kammhuber Line article), but the USAF also argued (as described in the article) that "Marshall's inquiry concluded that the presence of active German military units nearby, and the presence of fighters and anti-aircraft within an effective range, Dresden qualified as "defended"." (https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm II. Section ANALYSIS: Dresden as a Military Target, ¶ 11.) and this analysis was probably based on compliance with the Draft Convention for the Protection of Civilian Populations Against New Engines of War. Amsterdam, 1938. Art 2. -- Philip Baird Shearer 11:55, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Case for and against war crime

I find these sections highly problematic. First of all, they do not use reliable sources (and no, an inquiry by the US military is not reliable, since the US military is party in the dispute). The main source in the pro camp is described as a "revisionist historian". The "against" side lists claims of an inquiry solely by US sources, disregarding completely the british position, and presenting the contents of an "official guide" as supportive evidence totally disregarding the marketing nature of such publications. Surely there is some serious academic discussion of this issue? And when reference is mahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Talk_pagede to similar firebombings, surely the issue of how these are assessed is important? In this context, one could refer to the speech by the British ambassador given on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Hamburg bombings by the RAF: [1]. Quote "A madness gripped Europe between 1939 and 1945. The events of July 1943 were a particularly terrible and destructive part of that madness." Given the large space also given to the NPD's assessment of the situation in the introduction to the chapter, I don't think this chapter fulfills NPOV. It throws Nobel laureate Grass, a staunch supporter of the Social Democrats, into one pot with a party suspected of anticonstitutional activities whose leaders have repeatedly been convicted of holocaust denial. The chapter depicts opinions by individuals and individual organisations, which suggests they are representative for the specific positions held. This isn't just slanted, it is in some cases downright libelous, given that it associates pro-arguments with revisionism and neonazi tendencies. I doubt that Sir Paul Torry would like to be thrown into that pot for voicing doubts about the legitimacy of similar operations. --84.61.248.129 21:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I am so sick and tired of this,was a war-crime!,now they telling that 15.000!!died in Dresden soon they would say that nobody died!,It is a scandal meanwhile people go to jail in europe cause they dare to say that the nazis did not kill 6m jews!.They extreme right jews got the power and we ate up everything that "they-our" media says. I am sooo piss-off!.pablingat

See the arcived section Archive 13: Debate over bombings. There are a lot of sources that argue that it was a moral crime, but few apart from Jörg Friedrich seem to claim that it is a war crime. This is because as the legal section points out, there was no positive international law on the issue. As for moral crime, two books which put forward this argument are:
  • Grayling, A. C. (2006). Among the Dead Cities. New York: Walker Publishing Company Inc. ISBN 0-8027-1471-4. Grayling starts his book on a chapter called "Introduction:Was it a crime" in which on page 4 he writes "Is this assertion - 'delierately mounting military attacks on civilian populations a moral crime? - an unqualified truth?". In the chapter "The case against the bombing" on page 226 he says of the 1907 Hague conventions "however legalistically one might claim that its provisions were not violated in the letter, seems quite clearly and emphatically violated in spirit by area bombing". On page 244 he examins Harris's claim that there was "no international law at all" and mentions that Geoffrey Best wrote that the assertion was not correct but "if he had restricted himself to saying that there was not much of it, and that what there was lay mostly in the relm of principles". In the chapter Judgement towards the end of the book which includes page 276 he says is that "The history behind the provisions of the 1977 first protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 is left in silence by [area bombing]. But its meaning is crystal clear; as a retrospective judgement on area bombing, it nominates it as a crime." (this is a sumation of his argument on page 237). He goes on to say on the next page "In short and in sum: was area bombing wrong? Yes. Very wrong? Yes" but he does not say it was a war crime. Indeed several times in the same chapter (Judgement) he uses the term "immoral act" (page 272) and "moral crime(s)" (pages 272, 274,275) to describe area bombing, he does not use the term "war crime".
  • Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang (eds). Firestorm the bombing of Dresden, It is a compliation of essays one per chapter. One chapter is entitled "Dresden as a War Crime by Donald Bloxham". Bloxham puts forward a similar type of moral position to Grayling (he also quotes Geoffrey Best), but with some specifics for the Dresden raid.
If we were to include these then we should do as I suggested in the archive copy and have sections named in a simiar way to the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki article:
  • Debate over bombings
    Support
    Opposition
Rather than having the section called "Was the bombing a war crime?" which excludes the moral question, but that is the one most people seem to mean when they say "it was a war crime".
--Philip Baird Shearer 10:33, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with some of your points from the archive -though not with others- but my main issue was the sourcing: Citing a US military inquiry as "evidence against" is like citing the defendant as authority on whether what he did was a crime. My main point is that the sources cited here are unsuitable to make a case either way. One is directly and actively discredited -then it should not be used at all- and the other has a vital interest in the outcome of any finding. What is being cited here is not REAL arguments for or against assessment as a war crime, but merely claims raised by one or the other side. Whether these claims are true and whether they warrant the conclusions for or against the respective assessment is left to the reader, and that despite the fact that he is only given tainted material to work with. I fully support a major workover of this section, though. However, I don't think that the point that there was no positive international law on the issue holds water. While it is true that aerial warfare was new, that does not mean that it was not covered implicitly by previous conventions, nor that these did not establish applicable principles. Your focus has largely been on looking at aerial warfare in general, but it can be argued that firebombing, due to the indescriminate damage and the mode of damage going beyond explosives, being very much covered, for example, by prohibitions at bombing certain buildings -if you can't control where the damage is done, you can't avoid them- and the burning and asphyxiating effect of the fire as per the prohibition of asphyxiating, poisonous or other deleterious gases. What I'd like to see in a section discussing the issue of "war crime or not" is an NPOV compilation of the research on questions such as these, not citing what those involve thought of it -at least not as the main body. --84.60.109.207 17:14, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Currently the way the section if structured it is quite reasonable to place the US military inquiry into a section entitled "The case against the bombing as a war crime" because there is also a section entitled "The case for the bombing as a war crime" where proponents arguments are listed. The US military inquiry is a useful template to use as it does address most of the issues raised by proponents of "it was a war cime" school, but there are plenty of other sources on the raids which include similar details and those of the inquiry tat could be quoted instead (EG Taylor).
Please read the section on legal issues, the link goes into details on this issue, but positive international law means explicit interntaional law not "implicitly by previous conventions". For example Doenitz was tried and found guilty of a breach or positive international law (the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936) when he ordered unrestricted submarine warfare. You argue that "firebombing, due to the indescriminate damage and the mode of damage going beyond explosives, being very much covered, for example, by prohibitions at bombing certain buildings -if you can't control where the damage is done, you can't avoid them- and the burning and asphyxiating effect of the fire as per the prohibition of asphyxiating, poisonous or other deleterious gases." Where is your source that firebombing was prohibited by "bombing certain buildings"? Where is your source that "the burning and asphyxiating effect of the fire as per the prohibition of asphyxiating, poisonous or other deleterious gases." because the ICJ in their ruling on the "legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons" paragraph 55 disagree with this analysis. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that the points raised by the US military really address the points by the other side. The fact that a measure was sufficient to fulfill a goal doesn't mean it was necessary to fulfill a goal. To illustrate the point with an extreme example, while using a tactical nuclear weapon might get rid of the violent stalker in the neighboring city, it would not, generally, be seen as a valid means of defense against such a threat even though it is effective to that end. So demonstrating that something accomplished a goal is not enough to show it was a legitimate means to accomplish that goal. Second, you miss the point by demanding sources. I didn't state that firebombing "was prohibited by..." but said that a section such as this should show how such issues have, in fact, been addressed, instead of reproducing claims by parties to the issue. A 1996 ruling, by the way, is not conducive to the discussion, since it has no impact of what would have been found to be law 50 years earlier. Courts change their opinions. You miss the point, in any case, in considering this paragraph to be applicable to incendiary weapons. Unlike nuclear weapons, which generate massive destruction by the explosion alone, such is not the case for incendiary weapons. They are initiators of follow-up fires, which, once started, continue to exist independently of the ordnance AND produce the chief part of the damage. Thus the effects produced by the fire are not coincidental, as is the radiation poisoning or the fires in a nuclear explosion, but deliberate. More, the deleterious effect is produced by a persistent chain of chemical reactions, much like with toxic chemicals. So there is no real basis for suggesting the court disagrees with the ideas I suggested above, since the court looks at something entirely distinct from incendiary weapons. Even so, however, the court makes significant missteps in the assessment from a scientific point of view, ignoring that many early chemical weapons achieved their effect through a primarily caustic effect thus actually being physiologically (and chemically) extremely similar to burns rather than systemic poisoning as is the case with nerve agents. Thus pointing to the issue of poisoning, while stating that a clear definition is lacking, is merely sidestepping the real physiological effect of the agents and weaseling out of dealing with it. On a chemical level, the effect of chlorine is quite close to that of a fire. It does not act like a nerve agent, but causes oxidative damage to tissue, especially moist tissue as it exists in the respiratory system, the eyes etc. And coincidentally, chlorine was one of the first chemical weapons used in the 20th century. So without actually looking at what one takes to mean "poisoning", paragraph 55 is pretty senseless waffling, alas. But then, these points don't really apply to nuclear weapons, as illustrated, so the judges can be forgiven. Yes, that also means that General Pace's talk about white phosphorous not being a chemical weapon but an incendiary was senseless waffling, too, because he's in essence arguing that chlorine gas is not, in fact, a chemical weapon. --84.61.252.147 23:06, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


Far above - a good point - in order to please ( I am not quite sure, but for some reason they also seem very interested in certain sites ) some folks the deaths in Dresden will have to be replaced with birth figures. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 159.105.80.63 (talk • contribs) 20:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

isnt killing innocents a war-crime?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.94.215.213 (talk • contribs) 11:25, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

It depends see military necessity --Philip Baird Shearer 12:17, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


Jorg Friedrich - recently on CSpan - uncovered an interesting wartime policy. Destroying a factory slows down production - killing the factory work stops production. According to Friedrich, Bomber Harris Curtis Lemay, Chuck Yeager, etc killing civilians is a military necessity. War is between nations(peoples) not gladiators.159.105.80.80 19:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Killing enemy civilians in enemy held areas is not as effective as dehousing them. Dead people consume far less enemy resources than refugees. --Philip Baird Shearer 20:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


I believe Friedrich's thesis - from documents of the Allies - is that trained workers are not quickly replaceable, a factory usually is. People can live in some pretty bad conditions, factories can be run out of barns, but trained workers take years to develope ( of course now with automation killing the workers would be less effective ).159.105.80.80 15:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] World War II city bombing infobox

I know that this question is probably inappropriate for this articles talk page, but in the World War II city bombing infobox, just before the refs, the article on the Heilbronn bombing is actually the article on Heilbronn itself, and consists of but one paragraph. A better one (well I think so), is probably Bombings of Heilbronn in World War II, and so I think that the infobox needs to be changed. The trouble is that I dont know how I would do such a thing, or what I need to go or do for that to happen. Maybe someone can help me out? ♣ ÅñôñÿMôús Dîššíd3nt 09:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

In the case of the {{WWII city bombing}} template there is a small edit button top left of the template. But for any template just add "template:" before the name of the template in the search box and click go. See the talk page on template talk:WWII_city_bombing about the bloat that has taken place in this template. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../b/o/m/Talk%7EBombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II_20e5.html"